I’ve re-read my own words a few times now and I want to take a step back because I think I’m overreacting hardcore and I regret that. I think I wanted it to be a thing more than it deserves to be a thing. Ultimately I think everyone might be overreacting a bit, but I can’t say it’s unexpected. After all, a team that has been caught cheating before is now under investigation for something they did in a game that propelled them to the Super Bowl. I am not surprised it’s blown up in the slightest. While I don’t think their actions had much to do with the outcome of the Colts game, I think it’s fair that it’s blown up because it calls into question every other game they’ve played.

I highly doubt anything is going to come of this. I think the Pats did it but I don’t think there is any way to prove it. The fact that the Patriots balls were underinflated while the Colts balls were fine is what defines it for me. If it was weather or normal variation the Colts balls would be affected. I think the Pats cheated. I just doubt we’ll ever know for sure. I can’t figure out how the NFL can prove tampering at this point. Belichick and Brady both deny it, and why wouldn’t they? They probably know nobody’s going to convict them. There’s no way a QB who handles balls so frequently wouldn’t notice a deflated ball, or notice the difference between halves when they used non-deflated balls. There are articles out there right now about how many QBs do as much as they can to make sure the balls feel just right for game time. QBs are picky people, I just can’t see how someone like Brady could not notice that unless he knew. I don’t buy it.

What I think ultimately happened is that Belichick is a smart man who spends a lot of his time straddling the line of finding those competitive advantages, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he occasionally crosses over that legal line. I also doubt the refs did a very good job checking the balls. Think about it, you’re a ref, would you want to sit there and rifle through all 12 balls giving them each a close inspection? They probably just check one or two casually and say “sure”. If this is the case and I wanted to deflate balls I’d stick the one properly inflated ball on top, but this is getting into speculative conspiracy territory when the fact is I have no idea. I think they did it, I think the Colts balls being fine solidifies it, but I don’t think there will ever be any real proof and at most the Pats might get fined. This whole story is kind of bizarre and I’m kind of mad the Packers have gotten away scott free from national criticism after how they totally blew that game in Seattle because all of us can’t stop talking about Balls.

I’ll refrain on further Ballchat until this whole thing is sorted out for good. It’s too easy to jump to conclusions these days and I feel bad for doing it myself.

(One last thing: saying “OTHER TEAMS DO IT TOO” is still a bullshit excuse forever because even if it’s true, that doesn’t mean you didn’t break the rules and shouldn’t be punished for it)

Although I have to admit, I’m no Pats fan but I’m of the opinion that they did nothing wrong against the Ravens. Were they sneaky? Sure, but if you’re going to rule out sneaky, then all trick plays should be illegal.

Yeah, thinking along those lines, the Seahawks should be DQ’d because they used a fake FG in the NFC Championship game. I’m sure every team tries to use little things like this their advantage. Some just get caught. I don’t put much stock into it. The Patriots cheated. The Colts didn’t show up. In a game that big, which one is really the bad thing?

Okay. Say it wasn’t 45-7. Say that Indy actually held up, and it was 13-7. And none of that “But it WASN’T” arsewash, kthx.

We know ol’ Bill Bellend said they operated to the letter of the rules. We also know, from only the exact previous game to this one, that he just LOVES to measure the tensile strength of every single last damn letter to within one molecule of snapping wherever and whenever he can.

Also, Brady said he likes the balls at the minimum end of the mandated pressure range, at 12.5 PSI, only one unit below the max at 13.5 – yet apparently he couldn’t tell when the ball was at only 9 PSI, a full THREE AND A HALF SHY of the minimum.

And remember that radio interview when Brady tried to dodge the question like a snake-oil salesman by laughing it off? I wouldn’t buy anything either of them says for a nine bob note, never mind a dollar.

Just look at the horse excreta that Iain Duncan Smith is putting the most vulnerable people through in the UK because he “believes” he is right (yet he’s been shown time and again to be spectacularly wrong).

You know what? Fine. Let’s wipe out ANY POSSIBLE advantage the Patriots may have had, by clearing them of all points from the 1st half, and only focus on the 2nd, when the balls were confirmed to be of regulation.

Patriots still win 28-7. Whups. Brady laughed about because this is, frankly, a laughably stupid controversy.

Also, the balls were not at 9 PSI, they were at 1.6-2 PSI below. In terms of how that affects the weight of the ball, that equates to the weight of one dollar bill. Literally a piece of paper.

What’s more, watch Belichick’s press conference. He explains, in fairly straightforward terms, how they are not guilty of any wrongdoing. This is, once again, people being sick of the Pats success and doing anything they can to discredit them.

Also holy crap comparing a football game to Duncan Smith go take a lap. You took it too far.

I don’t understand how this is anything other than a HUGE deal, honestly. We hear all the time, “Football is a game of inches” and we’ve all seen countless games turn on a pick 6, a fumble, or even just a dropped pass. Here we have a team explicitly breaking the rules to gain an advantage, reducing their likelihood for all these occurrences, and people don’t think it’s a big deal? That’s ridiculous.

My initial thought was that the Patriots were just better than the Colts, and frankly Tom Brady could have worn a beehive not a helmet in the second half and it wouldn’t have mattered. But now, the more I think about it, for all we know with a properly inflated ball, maybe Brady throws a pick 6 and Blount fumbles and the Colts go into half time winning 20-10. People can say it doesn’t matter because the Patriots were better in the second half and so it didn’t change the game, but the fact remains we don’t know how that game would have gone had it been played fairly, and we never will.

All the deflation did was make the balled 00.3 seconds slower on a 20 yard pass. It also made the grip better by 1 millimeter. It did nothing to change the way the pats played. If anything the rain made Brady’s passes worse. It’s not a huge deal at all.

Colin, I have to disagree – virtually every person I have heard talk on the subject has said that a slightly deflated ball is easier to throw, easier to catch, and easier to carry without fumbling. That bit of extra grip makes an even bigger difference in poor weather. The difference isn’t in the time it takes the ball to arrive, it’s in the extra control that is afforded a QB using a slightly deflated ball.

I believe the Patriots are the better team, and truthfully, I *think* on a perfectly even playing field they would have still won. That isn’t really the point – I am not sure why we should be dismissive of cheating just because we don’t *think* it had a large effect on the outcome of the game. If you cheat at a casino, even if you don’t win, do you think they’d declare it “not a big deal”?

I think that’s an interesting point Dave, because how many times have we heard about how much bad weather affects other quarterbacks, but Brady never seems to play any worse for it? A significant chunk of his legacy is built on that fact, and now we have a pretty decent reason to question the validity of it.

I’m not so silly as to say they would have been terrible without this stuff, but it has to make you wonder if maybe over the course of the Brady/Belichick era they have been doing this sort of stuff the whole time. An extra pick or fumble here and there throughout the years might have made a big difference in terms of playoff seeding, home field advantage, etc.

Idk about it clouding their past games. It was reported by the linebacker who caught the interception, someone who really doesn’t touch the ball all that much. If it was that obvious, teams would definitely pick up on it. You think that if John “deceptive formations” Harbaugh had heard those suspicions from one of his players, he would have ignored it? Not a chance. Maybe the weather was a factor too. We all know cold weather lowers air pressure. Brady likes his footballs to be as underinflated as possible, but maybe Luck likes his footballs overinflated, so the drop left his balls fine while Brady’s fell under. Just saying, there were a lot of factors at play here. This is only a big deal because it’s the patriots. If this were any other team, nobody would be talking about this.

if teams are not allowed to alter the balls then why do they have possession of them at all?
each team should be able to inflate or deflate them to their own comfort level. If a qb has smaller hands, then he should be allowed to deflate them. Maybe Luck should have deflated his own balls and put up more than 7 points, instead of crying about the Pats soft balls.

They are allowed to do certain things to the balls. Dirty them up a bit, sand them down to feel more comfortable, teams actually have a lot of leeway in how to get the balls ready. They even have a fair range of inflation they are allowed to use. It’s just that one of the things they can’t do is not inflate the ball to required standards.

My main question is, and it’s coming mainly from a place of inexperience, how much competitive advantage does one specific team really get from it? We know players claim they’re easy to throw and catch etc, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, Team A brings 12 balls, Team B brings 12 balls, and 11 of those 24 are underinflated. BUT the refs don’t just hand a team a ball from their own pool, it’s from whichever is closest at the time? So both teams would end up playing with an uncontrollable mix of regulation-inflated and under-inflated balls?

Nope, each team uses their own balls. Special teams have special kicking balls shipped straight from the league, and both offenses use their own supply of twelve balls prepped to their standards. Had Jackson never picked Brady, nobody would have known.

I like how since he said it it’s automatically true. It’s currently in his best interest to deny it, in the off chance the league is unable to prove they did it on purpose. The fact that he said he didn’t even know how balls are handled until now felt like a bald faced lie, you can’t spend that much time as a head coach who is known for finding all the little competitive advantages and literally never once find out how the balls are treated. That’s absurd.

But suggesting that the most likely answer is an over eager ball boy isn’t conjecture? What? Suggesting that Bill Belichick denying the reports automatically means he’s telling the truth isn’t conjecture either?

We don’t know if he’s lying or not, so it’s nothing but conjecture for both of us. My argument as to why I feel he’s lying is based on the idea that you can’t spend over a decade as a head coach and still be completely ignorant of how the ball situation is handled. Brady’s statement was even worse, he went on and on about how precious those balls are to him and how he wants them treated so they can be perfect for the games, yet he suddenly can’t tell the difference between inflation levels. I don’t buy it. Maybe they are that dumb, but I doubt it.

What annoys me the most about this whole thing is that after hearing about how Luck is so great for the entire postseason and the victorious crows of Luck fans after he finally put together a pair of pickless playoff performances, when he finally screws up and goes 12/33 for 126 yards and 2 INTs, this stupid scandal completely overshadowed the fact that he’s fully filling up Manning’s shoes in Indy, playoff chokes and all.

Of course, the reply I expected. “It’s not him, it’s the team.” Well, guess what? He’s had that same team around him all season, and with the season on the line, he delivered his worst performance. That’s just choking.

Actually, he hasn’t had the same team around him all season. Luck, in that game, was without Ahmad Bradshaw, the only running back worth a damn in the Colts backfield. With Bradshaw, the Colts had enough balance on offense to force you to play honest against Luck, and they had a reliable pass-catcher at RB. Without him, they had Trent Richardson, the posterchild for why the first-round running back is an extinct breed, Dan Herron, who did a commendable job and was better than Richardson but was #3 on the depth chart for a reason, and Zurlon Tipton, who was about as useful as you’d expect an undrafted rookie with less than 100 career all-purpose yards and not even twenty career touches to be.

Don’t underestimate the importance of a run game, especially for a young quarterback, which it’s easy to forget Andrew Luck still is. Would the Colts have beaten the Pats with a healthy Bradshaw? Probably not, too many issues on defense, and good as Bradshaw was, he wouldn’t have been good enough. But 45-7 would not be the result.

Why are they even using balls supplied by the teams?
Why not simply use 30 balls supplied by the league and completly handled by the refs? Instead of a range for the value, set one value for the pressure or weight.

For the sidelines and warmups the team can use their own balls, in-game only official league supplied game balls. Maybe rough the game balls up a little with a standardized process to simulate the wear the ball gets in practice.
When a player goes to his bench with a ball and does not give the ball back immediatly, this ball is out of the game.

And also stop this kicking ball / normal ball nonsense… one ball for everything.

It surely cannot be beyond the wit of the NFL (I almost said Goodell there, but… WELP) for the game balls to be provided and regulated by the league. Not with the moolah they’re worth. 36 balls per game – barely a dent in the revenues.

why did the Ravens “tip off” the Colts on the condition of the footballs the Patriots were using and not tell the referees or league officials themselves?

My belief is that this is a common occurrence on most every team, just not something that anyone talks about. I like how it was Luck who just happened to notice it but yet everyone else who touched the suspected footballs did not notice. It just seems like it is the Patriots hatred once again rearing its head to cast a bad shadow on the most successful team of the past 14 years. Just like spygate, most teams did it, but the Pats were the ones who got told on, Mangini and his sour grapes over his exit from New England. No one ever talked about the Broncos filming cause they sucked at that time, no one cares about losers. If the Patriots had a losing record no one would care about this or any other thing.

If the Patriots had a losing record this never wouldn’ve happened because they never would’ve been in the championship.

And the whole “every team has it” excuse is nonsense. It was nonsense when Ravens fans pointed at other players with domestic violence, it was nonsense when saints fans said every team has incentives, just because there are other sinners doesn’t exonerate you, you still violated the rules.

It was not Luck who noticed it – it was a ball boy on the Colts side. The team are responsible for their own balls, so Luck never would have held a Patriot football. Only Patriots players ever hold their own balls, except in the case of a turnover, as was the case with the INT that started this.

And not only is “Everyone else does it” the lamest excuse ever, it’s obviously not true because the Colts team balls were all found to be in accordance with the rules.

I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to understand where I’m coming from here. Long term success is respectable and commendable, it just gets dull after a while when you see the same thing happening over and over again. It’s like when you find a song you really like. It might not be your favorite song ever, but it’s really good and makes you really happy. But the more you listen to it, the more routine it gets, and eventually it doesn’t excite you anymore and you start looking for new songs to get that exciting feeling back. The Pats have been the same song for pretty much 15 years now. They don’t hold the same luster anymore. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve heard the same song so many times I’ve begun to resent it.

– Belichick, Brady, the equipment managers, ballboys, who knows who else, are all involved in some grand plan to cheat by deflating the balls a measured amount in between when the refs give the balls back after checking them and… whenever. No one ever sees anything. No one ever spill the beans.

or

– The Patriots maybe deliberately under-inflate the balls before they give them to the refs (just like the Packers over-inflating them for Rodgers), because that’s what Brady likes, and the refs just grab one and squeeze it (or maybe even check one and hey! it’s around 12), and decide it’s close enough, because who has time to stick a needle in 48 balls and pump them up (especially for a big game like the conference championship). I’m sure they have a ton of things to prepare for, too. So the balls make it through to the game not fully inflated.

Then the cold knocks off another pound because… thermodynamics (yes I’ve done the math).

Big conspiracy, or a lazy ref?

I’d also like to see exact numbers. “Two pounds” is very imprecise when you are starting from only 12, let’s hear the exact measurements.

Thermodynamics can only be bunk in this case if the Colts balls were initially inflated under the same conditions as the Pats’ balls. Perhaps, prior to the game, the Pats inflated their balls in a warm-ish equipment room to 12.5 PSI, and then when brought into the freezing field conditions, physics took over and dropped it a bit. I live on an island that’s pretty cold in winter, but nowhere near Foxborough conditions – and it was enough to knock a couple pounds from my car tyres. Obviously a ball is smaller and will drop less but when you consider the extreme conditions, it could drop.

Regarding the Colts’ balls – what if they were already outdoors when they were inflated, and so the pressure at temperature X is already within range? They could move the balls indoor where the temp would go up, so would the pressure – and then go outside again and the pressure would drop to their initial inflation point.

OR what if the Colts originally over-inflated the balls, or at least to the max allowed, understanding that the temp drop would lower the pressure? Of course, surely the Pats would do the same, but what if the equipment guy was new? Or just had an off day?

Ok, I’m am a Pat’s fan, so I’m biased, but I think Fred is dead on. If you listen to Brady on monday when he was talking to WEEI, he is WAAAY too flippant for someone caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

I think they submitted underinflated balls because, ehh, it’s not a big deal

I think the refs didn’t really check the balls because, ehh, its not a big deal

The balls were under-inflated by 7%. A simple ball boy’s error is well within the realm of possibilities. At the very least, let’s all agree that the attention that has been paid to this issue/non-issue (depending on how you feel about it) will ensure no ball is ever outside the scope of the rules ever again.